


Figure Out Whose Side You're On

by BethNottingham



Series: Beth's Drove of Dragon Oneshots [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Friendship, Gen, Hiccup has thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNottingham/pseuds/BethNottingham
Summary: It wasn't until Astrid shouted it in his face that he realized it-there really was more than one side. And if he ever wanted to live with himself, he was going to have to take a good long look at the one with wings and pointy teeth. 500-word drabble. Cross-posted from Fanfiction.net
Series: Beth's Drove of Dragon Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577986
Kudos: 28





	Figure Out Whose Side You're On

Hiccup lay curled up on the stone floor of the arena, face aching and stinging from where Astrid had planted her boot trying to rip her ax from his shield. As she whirled on him, he stopped trying to stand, and instinctively raised a hand to guard his head. Although Hiccup had been crushing on her since he'd supposedly hit puberty, he had to admit that an angry Astrid Hofferson was more frightening than the Deadly Nadder stumbling back to her cage in the background.

"Is this some kind of a joke to you?" she demanded, gesturing with her ax, which was still embedded in a chunk of his destroyed shield.

"Our parents' war is about to become ours!" She gestured at him with her ax-head, nearly jabbing him in the throat with it. "So figure out which side you're on!"

As she stalked away, Hiccup felt his shoulders slumping forward into his by now characteristic dejected-failure-slouch, but it was more a habit than anything else. While his body took her words as blows and acted chastised, his mind processed them, picking out one in particular: side. "Figuring out whose side he was on" implied that there were two sides. The word "war" implied that whatever there was between the humans and the dragons was more than just pest control, more than man vs. nature—more than he'd ever thought it was.

His whole life he'd always thought there were only two options—being good at killing dragons, or being bad at killing dragons. He'd spent his life thus far in the second camp, desperately trying to get into the first. But today, as he picked up the shattered pieces of his shield and carried them to the wood pile outside the ring, he realized that he'd had blinders on. There were sides—and one of those sides was a big black reptile who was probably still hurling himself futilely at the walls of that cove in the woods.

It would've been crazy, under any other circumstances, to think of going back and finding a wounded dragon. Actually, it was still crazy. He'd wanted to do it before, out of curiosity, because for some reason that dragon hadn't killed him, even though for a long moment there they'd both known that Hiccup fully intended to slit his scaly throat. But now…

He couldn't go back to a time when it hadn't occurred to him—when he'd thought they were just animals, no different from cows or bears or fish. There were sides. And if he wanted to be able to life with himself, he had to at least take a good, long look at the one with wings and sharp teeth.

He strung a new shield on his arm, grabbed the biggest cod he could find out of the storeroom, and prayed to any god who might be listening that the Night Fury would be more interested in eating the fish than the talking fishbone who'd tried to kill him.


End file.
